The Brunets, with their young son in tow, decided to make a break for it, and headed north toward the oilsands camps.

We were kind of panicking at that point.'

'And then all of sudden the radio station was shut down, they had to go. 'It was all on the radio we were listening to,' Brunet said. 'There were a hundred different feelings' A sense of panic built as the flames devoured homes, jumped the Athabasca River and began to encircle the city. Those children will soon celebrate their first birthdays.īrunet was 35 and a half weeks pregnant when disaster struck on May 3, 2016. That afternoon, her husband Matt paced in the kitchen as the radio blared, broadcasting news of the fire's unrelenting march. The little girl is one of several babies born soon after a wildfire last May forced the entire population of Fort McMurray to flee from their homes.

The next morning, her family completed their journey to safety, and Brunet gave birth to her daughter, Brielle, in an Edmonton hospital. As she lay in a strange bed that night in a shabby hotel room, feeling those first painful contractions, Monique Brunet wondered what remained of the fire-ravaged city she'd escaped just hours before.

Born in the fire